This is part three of an interview
with Steven Marcus Releford, Niles Abston and Johnny Mac about Y'ALL
HAD TO BE HERE, a show combining comedy, improv, podcast interviews
and an inside look at the lives of comedians that goes beyond mere
stand up to entertain the audience with layers of humor and
commentary from a team of who knows what they're talking
about. It's an education for anyone who loves the business of stand
up comedy and intellectual entertainment for everyone else.
If you are interested in seeing more
from the very funny people involved in this project check out BASEMENTFEST,
a three day event featuring talent from all over Los Angeles in a
venue unique from the rest. The comedic extravaganza will have performers from Y'All HAD TO BE
HERE and more with a party atmosphere only personalities as
powerful as Niles Abston, Steven Marcus Releford, Johnny Mac, Arthur Hamilton and their fellow comedic performers can provide.
Just like any good TV show, many audience members could never understand the pain, sweat and tears it took to get to the point where Donald Glove could do a show with as much depth as Atlanta.
Niles Abston: You
have to look at all the groundwork Donald Glover has done to make
white people feel safe around him. He is the safest bet for white
people when it comes to a black guy. He's "The Black Friend" to white people. He's funny, he can rap, he's handsome...he's been in
so many spaces from NYU to improv comedy to 30
Rock, to Community
where he's collected all these white tokens in a way so it's like,
"Alright, we'll let you make a TV show." And then it's
like, "Woah! That's not the show we want you to make, but we
like you so we'll let you do it.
Steven Marcus Releford: And
it's making money.
Niles Abston:
And it's making money. He's been able to do what a black film maker
has never been able to do on television because he's been palpable to
white people for so long.
He's had to make sacrifices to. It's
on YouTube. Chevy Chase...
Niles Abston:
He was so mean to him!
Oh yeah. Even Chevy Chase thought
the writing for Donald Glover was terrible because he was portrayed
as a dumb jock. There's also the problem of how Chase thought it was
ok to use the n-word in front of Glover. I'm sure the young man was just sitting
in the middle of all the controversy thinking, "I don't want to
make any waves." He had to suffer without saying anything to
move up in Hollywood.
Niles Abston:
That's what being black is. Picking your battles. "I'm not going
to say anything about this because down the road I want to direct."
I've been told this: "It only takes black people ten seconds in
this industry to be 'hard to work with,'" and once the word
"difficult" gets used to describe you, especially black
women, now people don't want to work with you. Donald Glover was
like, "I'm not going to complain over some TV role, I'll just
leave." He wanted to make a crazy TV show one day. It's crazy
how we have to think like this. White people don't have to do that.
They can just live in the current moment.
I've also been told about how
there's a lot of pressure on black people from Hollywood executives
sometimes to be a stereotype. To be more black. That's part of the
reason John Amos left Good Times. The show became a parody of
itself and the real people the writing was supposed to portray.
Johnny Mac: And
the fucked up thing is that the executives are probably arguing, "But
that's what people want." The fact is the audience is black,
Asian, white...everybody. So a white executive might say, "Our
white audience..." and if they put a black or Asian show on TV,
only those groups would watch it. It's actually that the white
executive wouldn't watch it. A middle aged white man is telling me
that young white people won't watch a show. "Only black kids
will watch this show," he thinks that. It's not the truth.
That's why you need representation in there, or you need to
understand what the big picture is.
Steven Marcus Releford: That's
what's cool about stand up. You can tell your story any way you want
to. You'll tell a joke, and it works, for either crowd, but the
laughs are different, right? It's because it's still a laugh, and a
truth, that needs to be heard. That's the same thing with Atlanta,
it's like, "Oh, we didn't want you to make this type of show,
but we've already green lit it and people love it." It's real.
It's truthful shit. I'm laughing in a way that's different.
Niles Abston: He
couldn't have pitched that type of show. And everything is based on
the pitch instead of the actual product.
He also makes fun of both sides. He
makes fun of African American culture and white racist culture.
Niles Abston: Right,
from the things he knows, though. It's a genuine place. He's not
making up a stereotype to make fun of. If a white person is making fun
of black people it's like, you don't even know anybody who acts like
that. What are you talking about?
It
feels sometimes that Glover is also being very meta. He's making fun
of stereotypes...and also making fun of television stereotypes, not the
real person or predicament.
Johnny Mac:
He makes fun of the white perception.
Niles Abston: Uh
huh. He's a genius.
There's
a part in his Childish Gambino video for "This is America" where
he's dancing shirtless on a car in a parking garage. The camera pulls
back. What's the color of the garage and everything around him? It's
white. He's absolutely surrounded by a white structure. He's in a
giant white parking garage in a white structure with layers going up,
and he's still near the bottom.
Niles Abston: That's
hilarious! I've never thought about it that way.
It's very subversive, if that's what
he meant. He loves David Lynch, he also loves Kubrick. I saw that and
thought, "That's how he feels. Look where he works."
Niles Abston:
And he had to do so much to get to that point. It's almost like he
became a rapper to make that show because he knew one good way for a
black dude to get famous is to become a rapper. He did that stand up
thing. He did stand up before rap.
Johnny Mac: He
did improv, sitcom, rapper, movie star...and then they are like, "What
do you want to make?" And he's like, "Fucking finally."
Niles Abston:
That's the thing, he totally cut to the front of the line because of
rap. It's because he got popular in another place. The only person to
ever do that was backwards, like Will Smith got popular in rap and
then went to TV. Donald Glover had to do the reverse, which is
honestly stupid when you think about it.
Talking to all of you also makes me
realize that even back then, Will Smith had to rap as if he was at a
Def Comedy Jam because of the popular stereotype. "There's no
need to argue, parents don't understand," sounds like a punch line.
The comedian known to the planet as Def
Noodles cannot be described by just a few adjectives or merely as a
noun. A funny multimedia entertainer who knows how to criticize as
good as he characterizes, Dennis Feitosa, aka Def Noodles, has
several YouTube channels, and a heavy online presence, with more
followers than Gandhi and more laughs than humanly possible. Armed
with his own fully operational studio, as well as his own comedy
club, the businessman, producer, director, comedian and successful media
personality is a force to be feared, online or on the stage.
Def Noodles desire to right wrongs and
tell truths has made him some adversaries. That's ok, the ancient
Japanese samurai had a proverb: "An individual with no enemies is probably not respectable." The courage to say what's against mundane cultural
norms is a hallmark of any famous comedian or writer, from Lenny Bruce
to George Carlin to Richard Pryor to Dave Chapelle, today.
With so many YouTube
channels dedicated to denigrating him you'd think he was some sort of
superhero going up against an evil online conglomerate with
only one power...filming themselves complaining about another, more
qualified person's hard work.
His club, his comedy, and the people who love it.
In a recent adventure Def Noodles
hosted a roast at his comedy club in downtown LA, right off of Sunset
Ave. where many legendary stand up comics got their start. While a
traditional comedy roast is supposed to be good fun, where nobody
loses their temper and silver tongues win, not violence, a man
somewhat unknown to the world calling himself Salvo Pancakes
(hereafter known as Mr. Pancakes) decided to try to ruin a fun night
out by trying to start a fight and create a scandal to gain
notoriety, similar to the dumbass that rushed Dave Chapelle months
ago and got so beat up he looked like he lost The Ultimate Fighting
Championship.
Violence is never cool in stand up
comedy, and The Slap, which is what comedians call what Will Smith
did to Chris Rock at the last Academy Awards, has made stand up
comics afraid to perform, especially females. Mr. Pancakes didn't
just act like a kichigai (it's a great Japanese word, perfect for
describing an egotistical narcissist that ruins the party, look it
up) for his fifteen seconds of online fame...the man ruined his
career and endangered the lives of women in the club, trying to start
a riot just because of an online argument that never needed to get
violent. I guess Mr. Pancakes isn't a feminist, aside from not being
fun to work with or funny to others. So what happened?
How did Mr. Pancakes end up at your
show?
Def Noodles: It's
a crazy story. I can't go into all of the details because it involves
a legal situation. Essentially, we did the first roast battle. People
online would chicken out. They would all talk a bunch of shit I would
invite them to come over and they would all find some excuse. We had
one person say, "I'm going! I'm going!" on Twitter space
and then I said I would pay for her ticket to come, and she said, "I
can't." So we did the first one. It was very successful. A lot
of fun to do. A lot of people really enjoyed it and came back for the
second one.
The first Roast Battle was sold out,
right?
Def Noodles:
Yeah, it sold out. The narrative on the internet is that I had
seven friends here. As far as tickets go we sold 38, 39 tickets, we
had all the plus ones and the guests, so it was about 50 people. For
the second Roast Battle we had 55 to 60 people. So the difference is
that we only had one camera angle on the first one because I had some
technical issues so we didn't really show the audience but there were
a lot of people in the building. The whole building was packed for the
second one.
So how Pancakes
ended up at the second one is that as soon as I announced it...I
think I announced the second one after maybe a couple days after the
first. He reached out and said he really wanted to be in it, that he
would fly in from Ohio, which is where he's from...he essentially
invited himself. I was aware he was a troll who works for
people I'm suing. I thought it would be a good precedent to set for
other YouTubers.
You wanted to give others a chance
to back up their words, and also give yourself a chance to do the
same.
Def Noodles:
Yeah. I liked the idea of having somebody show up. This has never
been done before in the YouTube community. Comedy happens all the
time. On YouTube it's usually people talking shit behind a screen
protected by the anonymity or the difference between themselves. So I
thought it would be interesting to have that play out here and that's
how he (Mr. Pancakes) ended up getting invited. I was like, "Let's
have a YouTuber." I like helping out people. We help each other
out all the time out here.
To his credit, he's being
courageous. You are pretty high up up there amongst the clouds with your career and
this guy is still on Earth, so you are being nice to reach down and
help this dude.
Mr. Pancakes, being unhappy.
Def Noodles: Yeah, the entertainment business is not
really built for upward mobility. All of this I had to build myself.
I had to save the money and then surround myself with other people
who are even better at it than I am so we can do more, which is where
everyone else comes in. Everyone brings something to the table.
I like creating
culture. I think creating something fun and cool and funny is
ultimately the objective and incorporating YouTube as much as
possible because it's such an insular thing. What I get from a lot of
people is, "Why did you put up so much of of Pancakes shit?"
Because honestly I wanted to see where it would go because nothing
like this has ever been done in the YouTube community. You're getting
street comics, and YouTube drama from people used to trolling you in
a basement, putting it all together and seeing what happens.
Pancakes had the courage as a troll
to show up and do something. I admire that. It took balls.
Def Noodles: 100%.
As a comic I can appreciate the balls that it took. That's like,
first year comic shit, a lot of the stuff he did, being so
antagonistic, so in your face. I used to host open mics in New York
and I saw the same thing happen some guy walks in and he's with his
friends who think he's funny and he bombs. Those same people who are
funny in front of a group of friends cracking jokes can't handle it
onstage so they start bombing and panicking.
In one case I saw
this guy have a violent meltdown, take off his shirt and start flailing, trying
anything he can to be funny. That's first year comic shit. If Salvo
had any experience he'd know that he's essentially jeopardizing all
the comics around him, and endangering everybody around him, by doing
the shit that he is doing.
Sure, he's getting
a specific audience of trolls to laugh because of the schadenfreude.
They are enjoying, "my downfall." "Yes! Dennis is
taking it!" And at what cost? There's no club in LA or New York
that would put up with that type of shit.
Also, when you listen to him and
look at him in the video of the roast the guy looks unhinged. He
looks angry. A roast is a bunch of guys making fun of each other.
It's not supposed to be serious. Mr. Pancakes looks like Wolverine
going into berserker mode and taking out half of the MCU.
Def Noodles: Yeah,
honestly the way we handled it, outside of me pushing him when he
wouldn't get off the stage...if I could take it back, yeah, I shoulda
woulda coulda walk up onstage and kindly told the dude to sit down
and even if he got into my face like I did before he came onto the
show.
Was Mr. Pancakes angry and violent
with you before the show?
Def Noodles:
He'd been trying really hard to break into the green room and
cause a scene. Two of my staff had to stop him. He was banging on
windows when he first got here. I didn't want to have him in the green room because he had
been antagonizing other comics. I didn't want to have a situation in
the green room get out of hand, I'd rather have it in a controlled
environment where we have three security guards instead of just one
back here.
So he was already trying to create a
scene before he got pushed?
Def Noodles:
100%. Exactly. He was walked off stage two or three times before
anyone walked out. He knew I was going to come out because the show
was starting. So he was looking for a reaction, and he definitely got
a reaction. He got his clip, he got his fight. He got pushed by Def
Noodles and all that . I would have done that differently. I think
that honestly, the whole night, considering the environment we had,
that we had 10 to 15 hecklers at one time...
Def Noodles killing it at Flapper's.
You guys look like you are all
keeping calm.
Def Noodles: Yes,
we handled it pretty well. I think Salvo is going to look back at
himself and be extremely embarrassed if he isn't yet. Unless he feels
absolutely no shame whatsoever or he's that gung ho about clout and
getting attention that he'll do anything for it. I do believe that at
some point he's going to look back and feel a deep sense of shame
because he didn't ruin the show for me, I just feel bad because
people came up to me who had also bought tickets for our next show
and said they couldn't enjoy the show because he was causing a scene
outside and screaming at people outside of the club after he got
kicked out.
So Mr. Pancakes was going out
messing with the show after he was 86'd?
Def Noodles: Yeah, he got taken
out, and after that we wrapped up the show in about a minute after
we got our bearings back together. What he doesn't understand is that
there is a greater spectrum than the one he is insulated in who just
enjoy trolling. There's a greater community. What he did is fucked
up.
What bothers me is
that in the videos where he talks about the roast Mr. Pancakes says,
"Ha! He fell into my trap! Def Noodles totally fell for what I
was going to do!" That tells you he is a guy that walked in with
an agenda.
What people online need to
understand is that in the video, he is trying to destroy the world
around him. You guys are being very calm despite that. You're trying
to protect the world around you. A protector is under an incredible
amount of stress because you are worried about your people and
establishment while he's just shooting everything with a
flamethrower. When you pushed him you were just trying to protect the
show.
Def Noodles: Yes.
That's not the narrative on the internet. The narrative is that I
assaulted him and he's some sort of victim, even though I've shown
how he, a dozen of his friends and some guy who created another show
essentially coordinated this attack, how they were literally trying
to incite a riot in my building, I got an email from the guy who paid
for Pancakes to fly out here tell me a week and half beforehand, "I
hope you have insurance, we are going to burn your place down."
Wow. That's not cool.
Def Noodles: They
were making threats. They were going to have people faking seizures.
The first show we had three security guards work the show. This time
I had four and an EMS. It was still not working. I was advised to get
off duty LAPD cops to do it and prevent a SWAT raid. They still
couldn't handle the situation.
It's more volatile because there are
a million people watching online and anything can make you look bad.
Def Noodles: This
is unprecedented too because we are filming it live online. Our first
show got banned on Twitch because somebody said something that was
against the terms of service. We had to figure out with the second
show how to have a delay in the stream to save my social media
account and not get banned.
I thought his plan
was just to go up there and get me banned on my social media
accounts. He could go up there and yell a slur, or just hold a sign
that has a slur written on it. So I had to be able to censor the
stream, and the last thing you want to do with comics is interrupt
their flow. I'm literally running a television station that has a
delay, like they do for the Oscar's. I can't afford to lose my
platforms because of how volatile it has gotten.
Mr. Pancakes, shortly before he left the show.
If you could do it again, what would
you have done differently to handle Mr. Pancakes?
Def Noodles: I
would have never let him in the building. If I had let him in the
building, I would have kicked him out earlier because he was already
causing destruction and bothering people. It was my curiosity. I
wanted to see the end of the situation instead of cutting it short
and thinking of what it could have been. That often bites me on the
ass.
You are on the horns of a dilemma
too because if you don't let him on, you are a coward who is afraid
to face him one on one. So he gets to show up, destroy the place, and
to a person that doesn't know what's really going on you look like
you just kicked him out. Mr. Pancakes wanted to
blow the whole thing up.
Def Noodles: That
was a dilemma, too. Somebody highlighted that on Twitter. So it's
lose or lose. I got a lot of shit because we got to his part of the
show eventually, and there are a lot of people who didn't even watch
the whole show, so they just see him get onstage and get kicked out
immediately. No, the guy sat there for the whole duration of the
show, to the very end, and towards the end I was advised by people I
trust to not give him the mic.
People
still loved the show. So did people online. So I decided to draw out
the suspense. Will I him give him he mic? So we could draw it out for
the people online and for the whole community. I asked the audience,
"Should I give him the mic?" Some people said, "Yes!"
Some said, "No!" I was going to give him the mic anyways. I
was just curious to see what he had.
So I kept walking onstage and
getting heckled, and then I got a lull where I could talk, so I tried
to thank him for flying over, because I think that took a lot of
courage to fly out from Ohio, spend two nights in a
hotel...apparently he has a nine-to-five job, he has a wife and kids,
he seems like a person who has a full-fledged family and he gave all
that up to come here and cause this scene.
At the roast keeping cool while facing the fire.
At least he looked you in the eye.
He's brave for doing that. He made the journey. A lot can go wrong on
a journey.
Def Noodles: I
respected him for doing that. Then I gave him the mic. His moment in
the sun. After everything he did...he completely chokes. And then he
says, "I'm not going to do any jokes, I'm not going to roast
you. I'm going to monologue for an hour." So he starts to yell,
"Fuck Def Noodles," and everything is chanting with him, so
I jump in and chant too, I don't give a fuck. Fuck me. Fuck everybody.
You were rolling with the punch.
Def Noodles: Then
he starts calling everyone who showed up before him a hack, just
disrespecting every other comedian that was onstage, which is an
asshole thing to do. He's not really a comic. He doesn't understand
what he is doing. Here's the irony. He calls everyone a hack and then
starts to make hack jokes, like calling me old, which is stuff that I
joke about.
There was this
little scandal on the internet that my age was listed as being 37. My
agent listed me as being that young so I could get more jobs playing
younger roles.
In your defense in Hollywood, it's
not your age, and the age you can play. That's what a lot of people
don't get. Everyone looks younger in Hollywood. You're not lying, you
are indicating the age you can play.
Def Noodles: So
ok, I'm old. He had his shot. He had 3-5 minutes. He starts getting
heckled and then turns to me like, "Are you going to do
something?" I'm like, "Bro, I've been heckled for 90
minutes. You can't take getting heckled for two?" Here's a taste
of your own medicine. Eventually security took the microphone away
and dragged him out. He caused a scene. That's all he wanted. To be
dragged out.
In the video people can see he's
trying to peaceful noncompliance act when he raises his arms and just
drops on his ass like he's a protestor at a rally on the streets. The
problem is a person can't do that in a private establishment. That
shows his intent. The owner of a business can legally kick a person
out whenever they want. He's trying to act like a peaceful protestor
because he doesn't understand the law.
Def Noodles: Like
I said, there's plenty of evidence if this ever goes to court. He
says he has a ruptured disc...I've had a ruptured disc once and
couldn't walk for a week and a half. I couldn't get out of bed. He
was running around for two hours after getting kicked out. I was
immediately unable to walk.
It's obvious. If he was really
injured he would have gone to a hospital, gotten treatment from a
doctor, and then filed a police report.
Mr. Pancakes complains, Def Noodles explains.
Def Noodles: He
didn't file a police report. He didn't check in with any local
hospitals. He's just trying to have his 15 minutes of fame.
Yeah, if he's so busted up because
you hurt him so bad, why is he doing all of those interviews? That's
not a person in pain and agony, fighting for his life because of the
injuries. He's just trying to get bad publicity.
Def Noodles: 100%.
Then he gets into his limo afterwards and says he's going to sue me,
and he's just joking around. I have footage of him walking away
perfectly right outside the club here. He stayed around for ten
minutes after the show was over, still bothering people, still
getting into vocal situations with people.
Honestly, I don't
know where that type of behavior leads you. There's not positive
outcome for that. I really believe that there's a cycle of karma.
When he's facing the same shit he's been doing to everybody it's
going to be bad. Karma is ruthless.
In Hollywood, whether it's film or
theater you've gotta get along. He's basically telling every comedy
club producer, "I'm going to start a riot. I'm not going to get
along, I'm going to bust up your show and ruin it," based on
that video of the roast nobody is going to want to hire this guy.
He's proven that he's useless and cannot be trusted.
Def Noodles: Somebody
like that can only exist on the internet. This little tiny bubble on
the internet that values this destructive behavior. That shit gets
old. There are a lot of people that have made their careers doing that
and they don't really last more than two years. There's always
somebody who does that shit better.
That's why it's
cooler to build communities, with cool, artistic shit happening to
try to empower people so you are building everybody up around you so
everybody is lifting each other up and then you have something cool
at the end that everybody can show up for, instead of, "I went
there for a day and destroyed it. That's my legacy." Can you
imagine that? You'd have to be tremendously unaware to think that's
good. There were people who came up to me afterwards who were
literally traumatized.
The video of the roast looks like a
prison riot. It's not cool.
Def Noodles: Exactly,
that's the memory he's leaving people with. There are people who did
enjoy the schadenfreude. They were super entertained. But that only
lasts so long, because if you are just destroying you aren't building
something up. You're not adding value.
I agree. What breaks my heart is Mr.
Pancakes was so focused on hurting you, and look at the people he was
working with? There was some A+ talent on that stage. Steven Marcus
Releford has and all of those other comics have worked everywhere.
They are in films and on Netflix specials. This guy had a chance to
work with talent he never would have been able to work with. He
should have said, "Now is the time to get along." Instead
he's ruining a career he never really had. He wasted the opportunity.
Setting the stage...literally.
Def Noodles:
You are right. People are only seeing only the very beginning stages.
They are seeing just a baby that's three weeks old. By the time it's
5 or 10 it's going to be totally different. It's like a television
show. There are pilots that are shot on a shoestring budget. The
Office only shot six episodes and ended up being the longest running
comedy. In every season they got better, they got more writers, they
got better at everything, the coverage, the filming.
This is just the
beginning. When big companies approve comedies they greenlight a
dozen episodes because they know it will take a while for people to
understand the humor. So people shouldn't see the second roast and
think that's it. We are thinking two or three years down the line.
Everybody else is just looking at what just happened.
You are trying to
grow roots for a community, for people who are poor and need the
money and the stage time. Mr. Pancakes isn't just bothering you, he is
burning down a community. He's the bad guy in every Disney film. He's
just one person trying to hurt everybody else.
Def Noodles:
100%. We're trying to build a platform in a community that would
rather give a platform to sexual predators, right? It pisses me off because
I'm the face for all this, so it's like having a target on your back.
People watching the roast should
really understand the bad position you were in. In the video Mr.
Pancakes looks very angry, his face is red, and you are all doing
your best to smile, look confident and keep the show going on.
Everybody else onstage was being a professional. You did your best.
Def Noodles: It
was definitely a learning experience. I was never in a room that was
that hostile. With comedy shows there is an understanding that
everybody paid their ticket to be there and is there to be
entertained. But there was a large group of people who came and their
entertainment wasn't the show, their entertainment was disrupting
this show as much as possible.
The mighty Los Angeles underground legend and celebrity comedian
Steven Marcus Releford, Dennis Feitosa and friends in the green room.
True.
Def Noodles: That's
like some Twitter shit. That's gonna be a memory that I'll have
forever. There were a lot of comics that weren't really happy about
it and I had to apologize afterwards.
He was like a terrorist with bombs
strapped to himself. If a person is willing to kill their career to
trash your show, and doesn't care about hurting the audience or other
performers, even Superman couldn't stop something that bad.
Def Noodles: I
didn't expect it to go the way it did. We were talking about it
before. He really came here feeling emboldened with all the people
backing him up. If he just came here by himself it would have been
different. If he had came her with a neutral crowd or my crowd it
would have been different. I don't try to use my crowd against
people. That would be fucking terrible. Nobody would want to perform
here. Weaponizing my audience to attack people who come here...
You don't want to be a demagogue.
You want to be a host.
Yeah, exactly. I'm
wondering, if he had come here by himself, would there have been a
different dynamic? Imagine if he's by himself without the 10-12
people supporting him who were yelling and chanting people with him.
Were those people planted here?
Def Noodles: Yeah,
they were plants. I have the facebook posts by this guy from Chicago,
his name is Mike, he runs a show called Red Bar, it's like a public
access show. He's built a career making fun of comedians. A lot of
comedians absolutely despise him and really don't like him. So he
paid for Salvo's plane tickets, he paid for him to stay here, he paid
for his limo, for his security guard and the fans who came over who
were all fans of his show Red Bar.
Mike David, the anti-comedian, and his strange radio show, "Red Bar."
That's how Mr. Pancakes got
assistance. He had a bunch of bots.
Def Noodles: Yeah,
he got a bunch of people but it was Astroturf shit. What politicians
do to each other. They know there is going to be a rally, so they pay
somebody to heckle their opponent. They do that shit all the time,
it's just that nobody expects that to happen at a comedy show because
everyone else is there to be entertained.
Your detractors should also
understand that it's very difficult for anyone to keep their cool
with a dozen people heckling them. Even Mother Theresa would
eventually start flipping them off.
Def Noodles: It's
not even protected speech. It's what they call the heckler's veto.
It's yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I could take
legal action against him for that. For a lot of free speech laws
there's a year long statute of limitation on it. I'd have to look
into it. I'm pretty sure he committed several crimes with what he
did. He said he intended to incite people. That's not protected
speech. You can't go inciting people to act that way.
Mr. Pancakes had no jokes. He was
just angry. People also have to remember this is after Will Smith
slapped Chris Rock at the Oscar's. Every comedian in LA I talk to is
afraid of someone walking up and attacking them for performing. They
don't want Mr. Pancakes at their show.
Is there anything else you'd like to
add?
Def Noodles: I
know I got a lot of shit for pushing him. My conclusion is I had two
options. I should have either not pushed him or gone all in and
knocked him the fuck out.
Get sued. Go to jail. Fuck it,
that's punk rock. Not a good way to host a comedy club, though.
Def Noodles: Honestly,
if I'm going to get accused of something I didn't do then I'm going
to do it. Moving forward I am never going to have a situation like
that. I want YouTubers to be a part of this because I think it's a
cool thing to have. I have to establish limitations. Sure, I'll lose
the public battle on social media because I'm kicking them out of the
show, but the integrity of the show is being preserved because people
get to see the show they paid for. So at this point I'm learning
which battles to choose.
Winning is easy if you're willing to work.
A roast is about having a good time,
being funny and constructive criticism. Mr. Pancakes wasn't there for
any of that. People who aren't at your level will try to bring you
down. It like crabs in a bucket.
Def Noodles: I've
learned that I'm a little too laid back sometimes. Honestly, I could
end up making this all into a movie. There were two times I had to
get off the stage because I needed a drink of water. I was sweating
buckets, it was like 120 degrees in Los Angeles. We had air
conditioning but there were too many bodies.
The moment I
stepped out Pancakes started doing jokes about George Floyd to really
piss people off and get us banned. So when I stepped out there was
just this wave of negativity and all that anger, while back here (in
the green room) it was just chill, but it was like people witnessing
an automobile accident. So I'd step outside and just imagine a camera
on a dolly following me in and seeing all that. The guy said, on the
show, that he flew from Ohio to kill me. That's literally what he
said.
Author's Note: Mr.
Pancakes was not available for comment.
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